Chapter 1

"Hi, everyone. I'm Jackie Thum; I live in Binghamton, New York, and I'm a published author!"

We were seated at tables in our Helsinki hotel's overflow dining room, rising one at a time to introduce ourselves to the other tour guests who were part of our seventeen-day Midnight Sun Adventure. An open bar had loosened tongues and encouraged some guests to provide every detail of their lives from the day they'd left the womb, but Jackie hadn't wasted time with that. She'd skipped over her annulled marriage to me and subsequent gender reassignment surgery to focus on the most important thing in her life right now: her new career as a romance novelist.

"Here's my baby." She held up a hardback novel with a bubble gum pink jacket, clutching it with fingernails painted the same color. "It's only been out for two weeks, so I don't imagine any of you have bought it yet, but if you'd like to read it, I packed a few extra copies that I'd be happy to hand out."

The room exploded with applause that elevated Jackie to instantaneous celebrity status. Oh, God. I hung my head. She'd be impossible to live with for the next two weeks.

"I've never met a real author," a big-boned lady wearing too much sparkly face powder called out when the applause died down.

Jackie flung her mane of shiny chestnut hair over her shoulder and smiled with the white-toothed poise of a former Miss Texas. "I'll let you in on a little secret: we authors paint our toenails one at a time, just like everyone else."

"What's your book about?" asked a bejeweled woman who'd introduced herself as Portia Van Cleef from Florida.

"That's so sweet of you to ask!" All six feet of Jackie tittered with excitement. "I'll read you the inside cover flap. 'Pretty Little Secrets is the passionate story of Emma Anderson, an aspiring actress whose lust for fame is only surpassed by her lust for a man whose secrets—' "

"Excuse me, Ms. Thum," our tour director interrupted. Annika Mattsson was a tall, multilingual Swede who reminded me of Olive Oyl with a Dutch boy haircut. "Since dinner is scheduled to be served in a few minutes, perhaps you could arrange to discuss your book later? We still have a few introductions left."

"Oh." Jackie regarded the guests at our table who still hadn't introduced themselves and downsized her smile into a pout. "Sure. I was just trying to accommodate my public." She crushed her novel against her cleavage and sat down next to me, trying not to look crestfallen that her limelight had been dimmed so quickly.

"Who's next?" asked Annika.

I stood up. "Terve," I said, smiling at the thirty faces in the room.

"What'd she say?" asked eighty-nine-year-old Osmond Chelsvig as he fumbled with his double hearing aids.

"Somebody take that drink away from her," demanded Bernice Zwerg in her ex-smoker's voice. "She's tanked."

"Tehr-veh," I repeated phonetically. "That's Finnish for 'hello.' I'm Emily Andrew, and I'm the official escort for the twelve Iowa seniors who've already introduced themselves." They waved enthusiastically as I gestured toward their table.

"Someone actually pays you to escort people who are already on a guided tour?" asked a bearded man with Harry Potter glasses. "What would you call that? Double dipping or overkill?"

"She doesn't do that much," Bernice insisted. "It's a pretty cushy job."

Bernice, with her dowager's hump, wire whisk hair, and crummy attitude, was both a Senior Olympics grand champion and an ever-present thorn in everyone's side.

"I live in Windsor City, Iowa," I continued, "and I'm recently engaged to a former Swiss police inspector who—"

"How many books have you sold so far?" called out a suntanned man who'd introduced himself as Reno O'Brien from sunny Florida.

Copyright © 2007 by Mary Mayer Holmes.